“So am I tuckered. I could sure use some coffee.”
Buttons slapped the ribbons, and the six-horse team lurched into motion. Lightning flashed and thunder banged as nature threw a tantrum. As it headed for a town lost in gloom, the Patterson stage was all but invisible behind the steel mesh of the teeming downpour.
Cottondale consisted of a narrow, single street bookended by rows of stores, a hotel, a saloon, and a livery stable. A large church with a tall bell tower dominated the rest. The town was a bleak, run-down, and windswept place. The buildings huddled together like starving vagrants seeking comfort in each other’s company. It was dark, dismal, and somber. Silent as a tomb, the only sound the ceaseless rattle of the relentless rain.
Buttons halted the team outside the saloon. A painted sign above the door, much faded, read THE WHEATSHEAF. “We’ll try in here.”
Red shook his head. “Try in here for what? Buttons, this is a ghost town. It’s deader than hell in a preacher’s backyard.”
“Can’t be. Ol’ Abe said we have a passenger . . . what the hell’s his name again? Oh yeah, Morgan Ford. He’s got to be here and a whole passel of other folks.”
Thunder rolled across the sky.
When it passed, Red looked around and said, “Then where the hell are all them other folks?”
“Sleeping the sleep of the just, that’s where. There’s a church in this town, and God-fearing folks go to bed early.” He angled a look at Red. “Unlike some I know.”
Red reached under his slicker and consulted his watch. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
“Farmers,” Buttons said. “Farmers go to bed early, something to do with all that plowing they do at the tail end of a horse. All right. Let’s try the saloon. Day or night, you ever seen an empty saloon? I sure as hell haven’t.”
The saloon was as empty as last year’s bird nest. Cobwebbed and dark, the shadows were as black as spilled ink. The mahogany bar dominated a room with a few tables and chairs scattered around a dance floor. A potbellied stove stood in a corner. Red thumbed a match into flame and held it high. The guttering light revealed pale rectangles on the walls where pictures had once hung, and the mirror behind the bar had been smashed into splinters.
“Ow!” The match had burned down and scorched Red’s fingers. Irritated, he repeated, “Like I said . . . we’re in a damned ghost town.”
Buttons had been exploring around the bar and his voice spoke from the murk. “Three bottles. All of them empty.” Lightning flared as Buttons stepped toward Red in the dazzle, and he flickered like a figure in a magic lantern show. “We’ve been had. This is what they call a wild-goose chase.”
“I don’t think the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company is one to play practical jokes,” Red said. “Abe never made a joke in his life.”
“You’re right. Abe wouldn’t play a trick on us,” Buttons said. “But it seems somebody is, and if I find who done it, I’ll plug him for sure.”
“Unhitch the team and let the horses shelter overnight in the livery stable. I’ll get a fire going in the saloon stove and boil up some coffee.”
“Fire will help us dry off. Damn, Red, this was a wasted trip.”
Red smiled, “It’s on the way back to the Patterson depot in San Angelo. We didn’t lose anything by it.”
“Except a fare,” Buttons said.
“Yeah, except a fare. But I reckon Abe Patterson can afford it.”
Buttons closed his slicker up to the neck and stepped toward the door. Red lingered for a few moments and decided that the chairs would burn nicely in the stove. He craved coffee and the cigarettes he could build without the downpour battering paper and tobacco out of his fingers.
Button’s voice came from the doorway, sounding hollow in the silent lull between thunderclaps. “Red, you better come see this. And you ain’t gonna like it.”
Red’s boot heels thudded across the timber floor as he walked to the open door. “What do you see? Is it a person?”
“No, it’s that,” Buttons said, pointing.
A hearse drawn by a black-draped horse stood in the middle of the rain-lashed street. Just visible in the murk behind the large, oval-shaped windows was a coffin, not a plain, hammered pine box, but by all appearances a substantial casket made from some kind of dark wood accented with silver handles and hinges.
“What the hell?” Red said.
“I don’t see anybody out there,” Buttons said. “Who the hell is in the box?”
“Maybe our passenger.”
“Red, don’t make jokes,” Buttons said. “I’m boogered enough already.”
“Let’s take a look out there. A hearse doesn’t just appear all by itself.”
* * *
Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon stepped into the street that was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning that glimmered on a tall, cadaverous man who wore a black frock coat and top hat and seemed uncaring of the rain that soaked him. The man’s skin was an ashy gray, as though he spent too much time indoors, and he held a hefty Bible with a silver cross on the front cover in his right hand, close to his chest.
“Well, howdy,” Buttons said. “Who the hell are you?”
Lightning shimmered, turning the rain into a cascade of steel needles, and thunder boomed before the man spoke. “I am the Reverend Solomon Palmer of this town. You have come for our dear, departed brother Morgan Ford, have you not?”
Rain ran off the brim of Buttons’ hat as he shook his head. “Not the dear departed Morgan Ford, mister. The alive and kicking Morgan Ford.”
“Alas, Brother Ford passed away two days ago,” Palmer said.
“From what?” Buttons stepped back, alarmed. “Nothing catching, I hope.”
“From congestion of the heart,” Palmer said. “I watched his pale face turn black and then he gave a great sigh and a moment later he hurried off to meet his Creator.” The preacher clutched his Bible closer. “He was a fine man, was Brother Ford.”
“He was a fare,” Buttons said. “And now he isn’t. There ain’t no profit in dead men for the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company.”
“Ah, but there is,” Palmer said. He smiled, revealing teeth that looked like yellowed piano keys. “Come with me . . . Mister . . . ah . . .”
“Muldoon, but you can call me Buttons. And the feller in the plug hat is Red Ryan, my shotgun guard.”
“Come with you where?” Red asked. “Me and Mr. Muldoon are not trusting men.”
“I will do you no harm,” Palmer said. He glanced up at the black sky where blue lightning blazed. “Only the dead are abroad on a night such as this.”
“Cheerful kind of ranny, ain’t you?” Buttons said. “I’ll have to see to my horses before I go anywhere, and I’ll take care of your hearse hoss.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe I just said that.”
“Hearse hoss,” Red said. “It’s got a ring to it.”
“Yes, I’d appreciate it if you’d take care of my mare,” Palmer said. “I think you’ll find hay in the livery, and perhaps some oats.”
“And where will you be?” Buttons said.
“Right here, waiting for you.” Palmer looked stark and grim and bloodless as the storm cartwheeled around him, putting Buttons in mind of a corpse recently dug up by a resurrectionist.
* * *
The horses were grateful to get out of the storm and gave Buttons and Red no trouble as they were led to stalls and rubbed down with sacking before Buttons forked them hay and gave each a scoop of oats.
Buttons had been silent, deep in thought as he worked with the team, until he said, “Red, what do you make of that reverend feller?”
“He’s a strange one.”
“You mean three pickles short of a full barrel?”
Red nodded. “Something like that.”
“He said that there’s profit in the dead man. Did you hear him say that?”
“More or less.”
“Do you believe him?”
&nbs
p; “Enough to listen to what he has to say.”
“Here,” Buttons said, turning his head to look behind him. “He ain’t a ghost, is he?”
“A what?”
“A ghost, a spook, a revenant . . . whatever the hell you want to call it.”
Red smiled. “No, I think he’s just a downright peculiar feller. Man must be crazy to live in a ghost town.”
Buttons pointed a finger. “See, you said it, Red. You said ghost.”
“I was speaking about the town, not the preacher. Let’s go hear what he has to say.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Reverend Solomon Palmer led Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon to a cabin behind a tumbledown rod and gun store that still bore a weathered sign above its door. The thunderstorm had passed but had left a steady rain in its wake, and when Red and Buttons stepped inside, their slickers streamed water onto the dirt floor.
Palmer lit a smoking oil lamp and a mustard-yellow glow filled the cabin. Red noticed that a well-used Winchester stood in a gun rack and hanging beside it a holstered Colt exhibited even more wear. He decided right there and then that there was more to the Reverend Palmer than met the eye. The man might be a parson now, but that hadn’t always been the case . . . unless the firearms belonged to someone else.
A log fire burned in a stone fireplace flanked by two rockers. A small dining table with a pair of wooden chairs completed the furnishings. Above the mantel hung a portrait of a stern-looking man in the uniform of a Confederate brigadier general. The old soldier had bushy gray eyebrows, a beard that spread over his chest, and he bore a passing resemblance to Palmer. The cabin had an adjoining room, but the door was closed. The place smelled of pipe smoke and vaguely of blended bourbon but had no odor of sanctity that Red associated with the quarters of the clergy.
“Help yourself to coffee,” Palmer said, nodding to the pot on the fire. “Cups on the shelf.” The man removed his top hat, revealing thinning black hair. He set the hat down on the table. “Are you sharp set?”
“We could eat,” Buttons said, a man who could always eat.
“Soup in the pot, bowls on the shelf, spoons on the table,” Palmer said. “Eat and drink and then we’ll talk about Morgan Ford.”
The coffee was hot, black, and bitter, but Red found the soup surprisingly good. “Good soup,” he said after he’d finished his bowl.
“I spent some time as a trail cook for old Charlie Goodnight,” Palmer said. “I learned how to make bacon and beans and beef soup because it was one of Charlie’s favorites.”
A cook could acquire a Colt and a Winchester, but Red figured he’d never use them the way Palmer’s had been used. He still put a question mark against the reverend’s name.
Buttons burped more or less politely and then said, “Tell us about the dead man in the box.”
“Brother Morgan Ford came to Cottondale ten years ago, hoping to outrun a reputation as a gunman, and in that quest, he succeeded,” Palmer said. “He built the saloon, but when the town died, Morgan took sick and died with it. Him and me, we were the only two left. I remained to take care of him in his last weeks, as was my Christian duty.”
“How come the town died?” Red said. “Looks like it was a nice enough place with a church an’ all.”
“At one time it was,” Palmer said. “But then the farmers who wanted to grow cotton here discovered that the cost of irrigating the land ate up any profits. One by one, defeated by the desert, they pulled stakes and left until only Morgan and me remained. Three days ago the cancer finally took him and he gasped his last.”
“And lost me a fare,” Buttons said.
“You still have a fare, Mr. Muldoon,” Palmer said. “When Morgan lay dying he told me to contact his only living relative, a niece by the name of Luna Talbot, and ask her if she would bury him. Needless to say, I was surprised that Brother Ford had a niece, but using El Paso as my mailing address, since mail is no longer delivered to Cottondale, I wrote to her and she replied and said yes. She wants his body and will pay to have it sent to her. Apparently, Mrs. Talbot has a successful ranch due south of us on this side of the Rio Bravo. In every way, she seems to be an admirable young lady.”
“And you want us to take the body to her? Is that it, preacher?” Buttons said.
“Yes, I do. That is why you’re here. I contacted the Abe Patterson company in San Angelo and made all the arrangements.”
Buttons shook his head. “Nobody made arrangements with me that involved picking up a dead man. The Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company doesn’t carry corpses, and if it ain’t there already, I plan to write that down in the rule book.”
“Five hundred dollars, Mr. Muldoon,” Palmer said.
“Huh?” Buttons said.
“Five hundred dollars, Mr. Muldoon.” A heavy cloudburst rattled on the cabin’s tin roof, adding to the reverend’s suspenseful pause. “That is the amount of money the grieving Mrs. Luna Talbot is willing to pay for the safe delivery of her loved one.”
“I reckon that from here it’s around two hundred miles to the ranch you’re talking about,” Buttons said. “That’s a fifty-dollar fare.”
“And indeed, you are correct, Mr. Muldoon. The Patterson stage company gets fifty and you keep the rest.” The reverend smiled slightly. “Because of the unique nature of the . . . ah . . . delivery, Mrs. Talbot is prepared to be generous.”
“Red, what do you reckon?” Buttons said.
Before Red could answer, Palmer said, “I have a sufficient length of good hemp rope to lash the coffin to the top of the stage. We can make it secure so that Brother Morgan can take his final journey in peace.”
“Without falling off, you mean?” Red asked.
“Precisely,” Palmer said.
Buttons and Red exchanged a glance, and finally Buttons nodded. “Get the rope, Reverend.”
Rope Burn Page 27
